TWB: Rereading, 12/7/'09....

I just have to ask: Did they bean him simply because he was being a smartass, or because he, if I'm assuming right because polar bears are indeed affected directly by global warming, supported global warming being real? Either way, we sure as Hell know climate change is a thing now.... prays for Texans hurt by Harvey

They beaned him because nobody wants to hear political crap in their comics.

Comics are generally an entertainment medium. You read them because they're enjoyable- they make you laugh, they make you think, they make you feel for the characters, whatever.

Politics are too partisan these days- moreso now than back in '09. I've had a few quasi-political strips over the years, mostly in relation to 9/11 or the capture of Saddam Hussein, but over those same years, I've found myself annoyed by other comics that felt the need to shoehorn in a political jab at some politician or proposed law or currently-favored group.

So I've dropped most of those myself. I still like to acknowledge holidays that fly under most readers' radar, like memorial Day (my grandfather fought in WW2) and to note events like 9/11.

But unless I'm reading an explicitly-political comic, like Doonesbury, Mallard Filmore or Day By Day (which, I'll note, I don't) I don't like having the author's political views shoved in my face.

I've dropped at least five comics over the years, probably more like twice that many- that is, comics I actually at one time read on a regular basis- because the author decided he'd spend a couple of weeks telling his readers how stupid they are for having X viewpoint, or not realizing how wonderful proposed, largely unconstitutional law Y was, or blaming Z event on an entire political party.

One comic eventually evolved to the point where it was clear the one and only acceptable viewpoint was that of militant, literally-blow-up-the-movie-theaters feminism. Another author constantly injected his religious views, to the point where the reader was basically told if he or she didn't believe in precisely that same favor of religion, he or she was a doomed sinner. A third constantly equated President Bush with Hitler. A fourth was so full of ad hominems and straw men I would have sworn it was a parody.

And so on.

I'm not going to take TWB down that road. My comic is for entertainment purposes, not for preaching my political views. If I wanted to do that, I'd start a blog or something.

It's worth noting, however, that despite the fact we were all told we'd start seeing more and more storms, and more powerful ones, thanks to Global Warming after Katrina, Harvey is the first "category" level storm to hit the Gulf since Ike in 2008- nine years ago.

Considering eight hit the Gulf between '04 and '05 (Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma) and none since '08, to a thinking man that kind of calls into question the dire predictions from the Katrina aftermath.

And considering that virtually none of the... what is it, eighty-seven different climate models used to predict global warming has tracked with actual measured results (virtually all wildly overestimating the actual amount of warming) that, too, kind of calls into question those dire predictions.

Worse are calls for dissenting opinions to literally sit down and shut up. That's not how science works! There is no such thing as "settled science"!

The list of stuff that was "settled science" that was then proven wrong is endless- like the old "we only use 10% of our brains", or that cracking your knuckles would give you arthritis, or that sharks don't get cancer, or that people believed that the earth was flat until relatively recently. (Eratosthenes not only knew but measured it's circumference around 200 BCE.)

On a more scientific scale, Edward Teller thought that detonating the original nuclear bomb at Trinity could possibly "ignite the air"- IE, causing the nitrogen in the atmosphere to fission in a chain reaction. (Oppenheimer ran the numbers and said it was virtually impossible, before the test was run, by the way.)

Science is not a thing or a target. We don't reach 'the end of science' and then go on to something else. It's a process of analysis, and attempting to explain the results of that analysis.

And in this case, we have two major data points: That we were "supposed" to have more and stronger storms, but haven't, and that the vast majority of climate-change models have already been proven wrong. That suggests, to the thinking man, that perhaps the science is not so settled as some would have you believe.

And that blaming the current storm, the thirty-seventh to hit the Gulf states since 1900- an average of one every three years- on Global Warming, might be a weee bit presumptive.

They beaned him because nobody wants to hear political crap in their comics.

Comics are generally an entertainment medium. You read them because they're enjoyable- they make you laugh, they make you think, they make you feel for the characters, whatever.

Politics are too partisan these days- moreso now than back in '09. I've had a few quasi-political strips over the years, mostly in relation to 9/11 or the capture of Saddam Hussein, but over those same years, I've found myself annoyed by other comics that felt the need to shoehorn in a political jab at some politician or proposed law or currently-favored group.

So I've dropped most of those myself. I still like to acknowledge holidays that fly under most readers' radar, like memorial Day (my grandfather fought in WW2) and to note events like 9/11.

But unless I'm reading an explicitly-political comic, like Doonesbury, Mallard Filmore or Day By Day (which, I'll note, I don't) I don't like having the author's political views shoved in my face.

I've dropped at least five comics over the years, probably more like twice that many- that is, comics I actually at one time read on a regular basis- because the author decided he'd spend a couple of weeks telling his readers how stupid they are for having X viewpoint, or not realizing how wonderful proposed, largely unconstitutional law Y was, or blaming Z event on an entire political party.

One comic eventually evolved to the point where it was clear the one and only acceptable viewpoint was that of militant, literally-blow-up-the-movie-theaters feminism. Another author constantly injected his religious views, to the point where the reader was basically told if he or she didn't believe in precisely that same favor of religion, he or she was a doomed sinner. A third constantly equated President Bush with Hitler. A fourth was so full of ad hominems and straw men I would have sworn it was a parody.

And so on.

I'm not going to take TWB down that road. My comic is for entertainment purposes, not for preaching my political views. If I wanted to do that, I'd start a blog or something.

It's worth noting, however, that despite the fact we were all told we'd start seeing more and more storms, and more powerful ones, thanks to Global Warming after Katrina, Harvey is the first "category" level storm to hit the Gulf since Ike in 2008- nine years ago.

Considering eight hit the Gulf between '04 and '05 (Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma) and none since '08, to a thinking man that kind of calls into question the dire predictions from the Katrina aftermath.

And considering that virtually none of the... what is it, eighty-seven different climate models used to predict global warming has tracked with actual measured results (virtually all wildly overestimating the actual amount of warming) that, too, kind of calls into question those dire predictions.

Worse are calls for dissenting opinions to literally sit down and shut up. That's not how science works! There is no such thing as "settled science"!

The list of stuff that was "settled science" that was then proven wrong is endless- like the old "we only use 10% of our brains", or that cracking your knuckles would give you arthritis, or that sharks don't get cancer, or that people believed that the earth was flat until relatively recently. (Eratosthenes not only knew but measured it's circumference around 200 BCE.)

On a more scientific scale, Edward Teller thought that detonating the original nuclear bomb at Trinity could possibly "ignite the air"- IE, causing the nitrogen in the atmosphere to fission in a chain reaction. (Oppenheimer ran the numbers and said it was virtually impossible, before the test was run, by the way.)

Science is not a thing or a target. We don't reach 'the end of science' and then go on to something else. It's a process of analysis, and attempting to explain the results of that analysis.

And in this case, we have two major data points: That we were "supposed" to have more and stronger storms, but haven't, and that the vast majority of climate-change models have already been proven wrong. That suggests, to the thinking man, that perhaps the science is not so settled as some would have you believe.

And that blaming the current storm, the thirty-seventh to hit the Gulf states since 1900- an average of one every three years- on Global Warming, might be a weee bit presumptive.

Doc.

Thank you very much for keeping politics out of the comic, especially these days, what with the man who's sitting in the Oval Office. That said, if you support him, I do highly HIGHLY frown upon you, but that's 100% your choice and I'll keep reading the comic because, well, you keep it to entertainment and don't use it to spread your political views. I do also agree that we should pay attention on 9/11 (my mother grew up in NYC, I was riding with her to her college teaching job when they got hit, I'm still stunned thinking about the dust cloud) and Memorial Day (we put our men and women through complete and utter hell with the cheapest gear we can get for them, they freaking DESERVE some respect), and I was also happy when we got Saddam (justice!), and I honestly think those are light enough to be acceptable sorta-political things to put in. Art is self-expression, after all.

As for climate change, I guess we haven't gotten as many hurricanes, and I'm willing to bet a load of scientists trumped stuff up to scare people, but the fact is we've still got problems. We've still got melting ice caps and oh GOD the huge fires over in Portugal this summer and numerous other things. And who knows? Maybe we ARE experiencing climate change, but it's understandably very slow and subtle. As someone who grew up with a man who not only teaches college Astronomy and Physics, but has done physics experiments and studied Io as an actual scientist, I know science is ever-changing. We've made thousands of assumptions that later turned out to be false because, oh no, we're humans and we're fallible! Just don't completely write off our environment, never write off our environment, for the sake of those who come after us.

Thanks for the response, and sorry if anything I just said upsets you, sir ^^;

As for Trump, I'll quite freely admit he wasn't my first choice for President. Heck, he wasn't by 23rd choice for President, and we only had sixteen to choose from.

However, he has one major redeeming quality: He isn't Hillary Clinton. As bad as you might think a Trump administration is, we know for a fact that a Clinton administration would have been far, far worse. Trump may be a buffoon, and perhaps most charitably described as a clown, but Clinton was an unrepentant criminal, and would have continued and expanded the Obama administrations' assaults on the very fabric of the United States.

Only after Obama was out did we start finding out- grudgingly- how he, his DOJ and his Attorneys General lied, deceived, obfuscated, stonewalled and harrassed. Clinton would have kept that status quo and ramped it up to 11.

Trump wasn't, and still isn't my choice, but I'd have voted for a rotting ham sandwich before I voted for Clinton.

As for the climate, of course we have climate change. The climate is always changing, and has been since dirt was still under warranty. It's utter hubris to assume the weather will stay stable "just because we want it to".

There was a time when the area now known as Chicago was under a mile of ice. There was a time, much more recently, that England was so tropical they could grow grapes there. There was a time the upper slope of Alaska was warm enough to support prehistoric lions and panthers. In the 70s, scientists were worried about global cooling.

Yes, manmade sources are putting out a huge amount of CO2- but there were times in earth's past where CO2 concentrations were a thousand times higher than they are now, and those periods didn't enter into a "runaway greenhouse effect"- indeed, they were only slightly warmer than we are now.

The main issue "deniers" have with the GW/CC types is the "sit down and shut up" mentality I alluded to. Being yelled at, called names, insulted, called "denier", having papers banned, having grants taken away, not getting a grant in the first place, etc.

As I said, that's not what science is about. Science is the quest for truth- how does this work, why does that happen, what will happen if I do this. It is NOT determining an outcome, and then only accepting the data that supports that outcome- that, we call a cult, or a religion.

At this point we have hard data: In Al Gore's 2006 film, he said we have "ten years" to save the planet, while she showed pictures of flooding and tornadoes and other disasters. It's now eleven years after that, and the seas have not swallowed New York, Flordia hasn't been wiped off the map by a tsunami, etc.

When Obama was elected, he said we had just "five" years to "save the planet".

And we have another ten years of data to follow up all the predicted models of global warming, during which time the models have simply deviated further and further from observed reality. Representative graphic- note that the temperature, in even that outdated graphic, is not appreciably different, less than a tenth of a degree, from 1995. That's (currently) 12 years of effectively zero additional warming. Moreover, note the graph starts at 1975, which was the end of a cool period that started in the early 1960s.

So yes, things are indeed changing- but nowhere near as much as Gore and other doomsayers have been telling us. We also know that CO2 is not anywhere near as potent a greenhouse gas as we were told, and besides that, virtually none of the climate models took the sun into account, and we're only just now "discovering" (IE, they're only just now admitting) that the sun and it's cycles have a HUGE influence on our climate.

But, we can't regulate, tax or ration the sun, so the GW crowd has to keep the focus on CO2- which we CAN tax, restrict and regulate. (IE, somebody, like Gore, can make billions of dollars off of it.)

You're a man intelligent enough to keep a webcomic running since 2002. You are a smart man living in a world inhabited by Clients from Hell. You're allowed to go on a few rants now and then

I'll admit I don't know the whole truth (and these days, it feels like getting the REAL truth on politics can be impossible) since I'd really rather not give my depression more fuel, but I highly doubt Obama was trying to assault the fabric of the US. If he was, would he really have succeeded in getting us out of that recession?

Sorry, but I've supported the guy for years, and not just because I was disgusted at Shrub's lackluster job. I might be in big trouble if we didn't have Obamacare--I'm on food stamps as it is--and please remember that (as far as I know, I admit) the Republicans were doing everything they could to stop every single little thing he did, not caring if it was good for the country or not, in part probably because he's black.

As for Clinton, again, I don't know the whole truth, but please keep in mind Trump paid to make her look like complete and utter scum. He had I forget if it was either the FBI or CIA in his pocket. Trump might even be trying to make Obama look bad, too. He has the money to bribe it to existence. Granted, every lie has at least a kernel of truth, and I'm smarter than to think Obama's perfect, but I just wanna repeat that it can be hard to tell what's the truth anymore with politics.

But that's all just stuff I'm saying because I'm confused and upset and trying to hold onto what good I've grown up with in my 27-in-four-months years of life. I'm saying stuff that will upset SOMEone, and I dearly hope it's not the person I'm talking to. I guess in the end that I just want a working country where people don't fucking hate each other so much over the stupidest of things and just let people do what works for them (as long as it doesn't actually hurt others). Where my mother doesn't have to be thankful I'm not any darker than I already am because that would put me in danger of racist people with guns. Where we gave our military decent freaking equipment and weeded out the people joining the police to have power from the people joining the police to serve and protect.

...Bleh. Sorry, ranted myself, there ^^;

As for the climate stuff, there is one gas we should be wary of--methane. And if I recall correctly, there's a bunch of methane hidden under slowly melting snow somewhere in the world 8| Please correct me if I'm wrong, I want to get away from our human brains' tendency to accentuate the negative and focus on some positive things in the world.

The thing about politics is that there's always at least two different viewpoints.

I'm quite sure that most of what Obama did was and still is viewed very favorably by his followers, but there's large lists of things that, if viwed objectively, were in fact bad for the country.

The infamous XL pipeline thing, for example. It was stalled over environmental concerns- namely, what if the pipeline broke and spilled oil? Environmentalists considered the stall a good thing.

Except that meant the oil- which had to be delivered one way or the other- had to then be shipped by rail. There were at least three rail accidents- and spillages- between the time that Obama blocked the XL line and the end of his Administration. Pipelines, on the other hand, very rarely break and leak.

Also, the American waffling on the oil transport deal badly strained a regular, long-term partnership with Canada, who used to sell us oil at below-market prices. Because of the XL waffling, the Canadians ended that practice, which raised US energy costs, and will continue to keep them elevated.

Third, the simple fact that the XL project is an extension to an existing pipeline, one of literally hundreds of pipelines that crisscross the same region. Apparently those lines aren't a worry, but the one extra one was? That, of course, was all due to politics- the stall on the extension was nothing but a transparent sop to the environmentalists, and to hell with what it actually did in the real world.

The list of such things he did is endless; Giving away US control of ICANN, using the IRS to actively target political opponents (one of the things Nixon was impeached over- how times have changed) using the EPA to unilaterally change environmental regulations (they're supposed to go through Congress) and so on.

And Obamacare is a total and utter disaster. That, too, is not a "left or right" issue- objectively, it directly led to a massive and continuing increase in insurance costs (which President Obama promised us wouldn't happen) it's directly led to several manufacturers of medical equipment closing down, it's directly caused a shortage of qualified doctors and care personnel (most of whom have left for private practice where they don't have to deal with the regulations) it's a massive paperwork burden on hospitals, and worse, it lets the government dictate who gets what care, and for how long.

If some MAJOR restructuring is not done soon, it WILL collapse, and take a good number of insurers and even hospitals with it.

Yes, those who have benefited from it are happy to have it, but again, objectively, it's a disastrous law and has caused far, far more problems than it solved.

As for the Republicans trying to stop every little thing he did, no offense there, but is that any different from what the democrats are doing right now, to stop every little thing Trump does? For pete's sake, they're trying to blame Harvey on Trump!

As for doing so "because Obama is black", that's complete and utter horseshit. No Republican ever said that- only the Democrats did, when they didn't get their way.

And that's a prime example of how a Clinton administration would have been even worse for the US. With Obama, it was all about the race. Any time anyone disagreed with him, it must be because of racism.

You know what? With Hillary it would have been because of sexism.

Again speaking objectively, race relations under Obama have worsened dramatically, and we have the polls to show for it. The last thing we needed was Hillary to keep those fires burning, and to throw sexism on the pile as well.

And going back to the top, Obama did nothing to "get us out of the recession". Again, taken objectively, the vast majority of the reduced "unemployment" rate was actually people dropping out of the job market, not actually getting employed. The "official" unemployment rates are a metric of only those people actually receiving unemployment benefits. Your benefits run out but you still haven't found a job? You're still off the official rolls.

The total number of people employed at the end of Obama's administration was, as a percentage of those able to work, less than when he was first elected. Those people didn't leave, they could not find jobs, and generally stopped looking.

Obama is also the first President in history to never see a single month of 3% or better growth. Reagan inherited a Carter recession, and the economy was doing 10% growth within a year. Obama had eight years and averaged something like 1.3%- which, again in objective terms, isn't even that good since it barely just keeps up with population growth.

...Okay. Let me just say something quick: I am a 26-year-old young man who doesn't know nearly as much about the world as he should at this age, due in part to being raised by a father who kinda didn't really care that much and in part because I have Asperger's and thus suck when it comes to "getting" things, particularly social things. My political view was just "Shrub is bad, Shrub is bad, Shrub is bad" and I loved the fact that Obama, a BLACK guy, became president, and from where I was looking as just a normal, everyday person, he was doing an okay job.

The problem is I'm not an everyday person. Both my parents are freaking Ivy League, I have a full scale IQ of 122, I taught myself (and partially my big sister) how to read. Apparently, I'm pretty freaking smart. Hell, I'm never gonna live down the fact that my laziness and lack of completing homework led to me barely graduating a liberal arts college above a 2.0 by the skin of my teeth and the good wishes of my professors.

So when I find out that I'm completely and utterly wrong, that I have been thinking the wrong thing for a very long time, or at least that's what someone I respect is essentially saying to me to try and correct me...I don't know what to think. I'm upset at the person who corrected me, even if they're turning my worldview upside-down, I want to see if I got SOMEthing right, but I don't want that person to hate me.

I'm sorry. I thought I had valid points, and once again, I didn't, and now I bet I look like a complete freaking mouthbreathing idiot. I ended up wasting your time and possibly getting you riled up. I'm just gonna stop posting on this message board, let the people who know what they're talking about (and actually play paintball) talk and stuff, and quietly read the comic. I am extremely sorry to waste your time and energy on some stupid manchild like me.

I never called you a mouthbreather or any other name- if you'll note, at no point in any of my diatribes did I attack you personally, or even tangentially.

This is an excellent example of why I keep politics out of the comic. No matter what viewpoint you take, in today's highly-divided world, you wind of making somebody mad.

Here, you think that just because I'm countering some of your points, that I'm therefore attacking you personally- and that's not the case.

Part of the the anxiety we're seeing in the news out there today is because people got themselves emotionally invested in "their" candidate, and that candidate losing was therefore seen as an attack on them personally, and an affront to their values.

No, what I was trying to do is educate you.

We all get stuck in our own little boxes. We only read the things we like, we only listen to the people we agree with, we only watch whicheveer news program seems to "lean" our way. It's natural, people don't like reading bad news, and people don't like having their beliefs challenged.

But the one and only one way out of this partisan divide we're in, is for each of us- you, me, Bob over there, John, Fred, Gloria, whoever- to make an active effort to get and listen to opinions that differ from ours. To, as the business people like to say, to see outside that box.

If all your news only comes from CNN, you're trapped in a box just as somebody that only gets their news from FOX. If you only read The Huffington Post, you're in that "bubble" just as much as somebody who only listens to Rush Limbaugh.

But it takes a LOT of effort to break out of that box. You have to actively seek out alternate viewpoints- NOT just ones that reinforce what you already want to believe- AND you have to find trustworthy sources. Or at least relatively trustworthy sources, since pretty much all news today is biased one way or the other.

On the XL thing, yes, there were of course environmental concerns. But those should not have been allowed to trump- pardon the expression- the greater economic and energy-independence concerns. An honest man would want to see both sides.

As for Obama being black, I happen to espouse what a wiser man once said many years ago- to paraphrase, I cared far more for the content of his character, than the color of his skin.

The thing about politics is that there's always at least two different viewpoints.

I'm quite sure that most of what Obama did was and still is viewed very favorably by his followers, but there's large lists of things that, if viwed objectively, were in fact bad for the country.

The infamous XL pipeline thing, for example. It was stalled over environmental concerns- namely, what if the pipeline broke and spilled oil? Environmentalists considered the stall a good thing.

Except that meant the oil- which had to be delivered one way or the other- had to then be shipped by rail. There were at least three rail accidents- and spillages- between the time that Obama blocked the XL line and the end of his Administration. Pipelines, on the other hand, very rarely break and leak.

Also, the American waffling on the oil transport deal badly strained a regular, long-term partnership with Canada, who used to sell us oil at below-market prices. Because of the XL waffling, the Canadians ended that practice, which raised US energy costs, and will continue to keep them elevated.

Third, the simple fact that the XL project is an extension to an existing pipeline, one of literally hundreds of pipelines that crisscross the same region. Apparently those lines aren't a worry, but the one extra one was? That, of course, was all due to politics- the stall on the extension was nothing but a transparent sop to the environmentalists, and to hell with what it actually did in the real world.

The list of such things he did is endless; Giving away US control of ICANN, using the IRS to actively target political opponents (one of the things Nixon was impeached over- how times have changed) using the EPA to unilaterally change environmental regulations (they're supposed to go through Congress) and so on.

And Obamacare is a total and utter disaster. That, too, is not a "left or right" issue- objectively, it directly led to a massive and continuing increase in insurance costs (which President Obama promised us wouldn't happen) it's directly led to several manufacturers of medical equipment closing down, it's directly caused a shortage of qualified doctors and care personnel (most of whom have left for private practice where they don't have to deal with the regulations) it's a massive paperwork burden on hospitals, and worse, it lets the government dictate who gets what care, and for how long.

If some MAJOR restructuring is not done soon, it WILL collapse, and take a good number of insurers and even hospitals with it.

Yes, those who have benefited from it are happy to have it, but again, objectively, it's a disastrous law and has caused far, far more problems than it solved.

As for the Republicans trying to stop every little thing he did, no offense there, but is that any different from what the democrats are doing right now, to stop every little thing Trump does? For pete's sake, they're trying to blame Harvey on Trump!

As for doing so "because Obama is black", that's complete and utter horseshit. No Republican ever said that- only the Democrats did, when they didn't get their way.

And that's a prime example of how a Clinton administration would have been even worse for the US. With Obama, it was all about the race. Any time anyone disagreed with him, it must be because of racism.

You know what? With Hillary it would have been because of sexism.

Again speaking objectively, race relations under Obama have worsened dramatically, and we have the polls to show for it. The last thing we needed was Hillary to keep those fires burning, and to throw sexism on the pile as well.

And going back to the top, Obama did nothing to "get us out of the recession". Again, taken objectively, the vast majority of the reduced "unemployment" rate was actually people dropping out of the job market, not actually getting employed. The "official" unemployment rates are a metric of only those people actually receiving unemployment benefits. Your benefits run out but you still haven't found a job? You're still off the official rolls.

The total number of people employed at the end of Obama's administration was, as a percentage of those able to work, less than when he was first elected. Those people didn't leave, they could not find jobs, and generally stopped looking.

Obama is also the first President in history to never see a single month of 3% or better growth. Reagan inherited a Carter recession, and the economy was doing 10% growth within a year. Obama had eight years and averaged something like 1.3%- which, again in objective terms, isn't even that good since it barely just keeps up with population growth.

Would you like me to go on?

Doc.

I have no idea how you will respond to my view.

Obamacare was trying to mop up the floor wail the pipe was still leaking. The problem that I have always seen was the totally out of control costs of medical care. We need to do something to stop the soaking of the American people. Giving everyone medical insurance is pointless when all that is happening is we are just feeding another level of corporations profit margin. The best cure for a great meany of our problems would be to get corporations out of congress but that is never going to happen. If every medical office, health clinic, hospital, and so on was forced to publicly show their costs that would be a big help because the places that are soaking the people the most could not hide the fact that they are doing it. Instead of people just going anywhere they would be looking at the prices in advance and would go to the places that have really good care at good prices. Another thing that needs to be done is prices of drugs needs to be caped. When someone goes and buys the rights to a drug they cant raise the price they are forces to continue selling it at the price it was before they bought it.